


Time and Time Again

by rvst



Series: We Three Idiots [5]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Groundhog Day, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-05-18 12:39:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5928859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rvst/pseuds/rvst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny Lawrence graduated. The next night, the school exploded. This is everything that happened in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Hello from the other side," her radio alarm clock blared into the silence of the morning.

Danny slapped at it blindly, really feeling the effects of a night filled with alcohol. Adele shut right the hell up underneath the force of her fist. Her stomach roiled with the end of a small binge drinking session with her graduating class followed by a whiskey tasting with her vampire girlfriend and body shots off her human girlfriend.

Generally, Danny Lawrence didn't do an excess of anything, especially alcohol. However she was newly graduated from Silas University and it was something of a special occasion. Her Summer sisters were very convincing when it came to parties and neither Laura nor Carmilla did anything but encourage it because they were terrible people who liked to see her hung over the next day.

Danny let herself fall out of bed, thankful that Laura and Carmilla had gone back to their dorm room with the vampire claiming she didn't feel quite right and Laura following concerned as ever. Witnesses to what was about to happen was not what Danny wanted for her first real day as an ex-college student. The floor hurt and her stomach flipped in rebellion.

She opened her mouth to admonish either her own nausea or her poor life choices and found that she was so dehydrated that she couldn't speak if her life depended on it.

Stumbling to her en-suite bathroom made her grateful for the forced responsibility she had to endure as Summer Society Head. Finally a perk that justified the work she had put in over the last four years.

Emptying her stomach felt so freeing that she felt up to a super cold shower to shake off the cobwebs of the night before.

Emerging from her bathroom with heavy duty painkillers settling in to fight her headache, Danny reluctantly checked her phone for messages. There was going to be all manner of social media notifications along with Laura's drunken running commentary on whatever was wrong with Carmilla. Danny paused, did vampires get sick?

Danny prided herself on her instincts and they were all immediately screaming at her to investigate her vampire getting sick as soon as the room stopped spinning. Possibly before.

Before the worry could get into full swing, Danny's phone started making a noise so unholy she wanted to dunk it in the nearest barrel of holy water on campus. Were she not hung-over, Danny would describe it as ringing.

"Morning," Danny barely managed to say around the terrible taste in her mouth. She was going to have to apologise to her girlfriend later, the bad mood that generally followed her hangovers.

"Good morning!" Laura responded, smug and bright and Danny wanted to make temporary peace with LaFontaine to have her liver checked for superhuman capabilities. There was no way Danny drank that much more than Laura last night. "How's my favourite graduate?"

Danny rolled her eyes and winced at how much the gesture hurt.

"Did you stand up and make yourself worse? I can't have you both sick and Carmilla's only just stabilised after a night drinking herself drunk to ward off the worst of it," Laura rambled, she did that when she was worried. Or excited. Or tired.

Laura rambled early and often.

"Is she okay?" Danny felt the vomit wanting to come back up and told it firmly that she wasn't bringing up bile and one lapse in control was more than enough for one day.

"She's not getting worse any more," Laura said in a way that made Danny sicker. "That's something. Are you with the land of the living this fine, bright and sunny morning?"

"Yes, my curtains are still just as open as you left them, Hollis," Danny snapped, wishing she had more tonal control of her own voice when she was tired. "What do you want, Tiny the Torturer?"

Laura whined in the back of her throat, "I get enough 'bite-sized' related comedy from Carm, do you have to pile on as well?"

Danny smirked as she pulled herself into shape and set about actually getting dressed and clearing her head enough to notice that closing her curtains would block out most of the pain for long enough to let the painkillers take effect.

"Did you have to safety pin my curtains open and then challenge me to drink way more than my fragile liver can take?"

"That's fair," Laura caved, far too quickly for Danny's liking. "Can we meet for coffee? I need to talk to you about something that happened last night and I don't think either of us need it happening over the phone."

The hairs on the back of Danny's neck rose to attention and her heart started pumping. Each and every one of her nerves were screaming at her to run and run now. "The usual place?"

Laura missed the terseness in her voice, distracted by what sounded like Carmilla having a coughing fit in the background. "Of course," Laura said to Danny before barely moving the phone away from her mouth to tell Carmilla, "will you be okay for an hour?" Danny didn't hear Carmilla's response.

"Are you sure she's okay?"

Laura hesitated. Danny heard her hesitate. In the hour Laura was gone, Perry was going to show up and do the weird quasi-maternal thing she had going with Carmilla to soften her up for LaFontaine to run a million and ones tests on the sick little vampire. Again Danny wondered if vampires getting sick was a thing.

"She's not going to die and she's conscious enough to flip me off so I've moved that particular worry to a dull roar rather than a screaming panic. Furthermore, you remember Carmilla getting sick last night?" Laura was not great at subtlety, neither in her investigations nor her gloating.

"Yes, Laura, I wasn't blackout drunk, I remember the dumb idiot somehow catching vampire flu," Danny lashed out weakly. The hangover reminded her of every drinking contest she turned down for supposed responsibility reason and how utterly crushed she was whenever she accepted. Danny was fine being everyone's designated driver, the responsibility made her stand taller. "Coffee, then I get to taunt the walking dead?"

"She isn't a zombie and you should see the dirty look you're being treated to," Laura said instead of goodbye because Laura was bad at the word 'goodbye' and Danny didn't yet feel close enough to ask why.

Oh.

Oh no.

Danny remembered what she was fighting with Laura about the night before. The fight Carmilla had to get in the middle of instead of hanging back and leering at like usual. Before the sudden onset flu and the raging hangover.

Laura wanted to talk about the future. One day into graduating and Danny was already being asked to decide how her life was going to go.

Not by her parents, not the careers department, not some ridiculous occult force permeating through Silas.

No, her teeny tiny much younger girlfriend wanted to know if Danny Lawrence was going to sacrifice her pride and wait around for her to graduate.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

  
"Carmilla's sick and she wants to go out for fucking coffee?" Danny muttered darkly to herself, tugging her jacket on without noticing the girls of the Summer Society watching her with wary eyes. Danny paused briefly at the piles of mail sitting on the table just inside the front door and shuffled through them to find a serious looking envelope with her name on it. She dropped them all back where they were and began the relatively long trek to the Clockwork Repository coffee house that Laura loved so damn much.

  
The fact that Danny loved it too was entirely irrelevant in her bad mood. Piling on was the watch on her wrist informing her that she'd slept most of the morning away. There was no way she was getting away with claiming a rest day to the rest of the girls, they would be on her as soon as she stopped carrying around a cloud with lightning bolts coming out of it above her.

Summer girls were brave, but Danny had earned their awed fear and respect.

The Clockwork was run by what Danny could only describe as hippies who may or may not be androids. Because they were hippies and they burned incense constantly, Carmilla refused to go near the place. Therefore, no super vampire senses to check the owners for heartbeats, or mechanical whirring.

The smell hit her first, a mixture of nine different flowers with an overpowering undercurrent of cigarette smoke and burnt coffee making it hell for a vampire. If Danny wasn't used to spending most of her time either in a gym or in a sorority house, it would be too much for her too. She and Carmilla were considering asking Laura why she not only could stand it, but liked it. Some things were tenth anniversary questions, like what the fuck they were going to do about the Carmilla not aging situation.

"Welcome child!" Danny flinched away from one of the possible androids, they were all bright and cheery and Danny was not having it. "She's at the usual table."

Androids knew her face and who she was here for, life felt very fragile.

Laura had a massive mug of hot chocolate featuring coffee sitting in front of her and she was otherwise engaged with her notes on the possible hippie androids. Danny presumed that's what she was working on, always more information to feed LaFontaine and J.P. to stumble over.

Danny ordered herself a black coffee, because the milk they used tasted weird and no one ever agreed with her on that point.

"They know who we are, we need to go elsewhere," Danny started, regretting it immediately as Laura's head jerked up into a glare. "Not what I meant."

"You are determined to leave us, aren't you?" Laura wasn't angry. The hurt was worse, so much worse. Danny wished she'd taken stronger painkillers, she knew there was at least one Summer who had a morphine prescription for her periods.

"Things I say while that drunk do not count without context. Also, you asked a drunk person to have a serious conversation," Danny attacked right back. With the pounding headache pushing through her pills and the fact that they were having this conversation months too late, she was in no mood for Laura to force her way through the conversation. "Those are my plans, I said nothing about breaking up."

Laura leaned back in her chair while Danny made awkward eye contact with one of the androids and took a painful mouthful of scalding hot coffee.

"Do you know how far away that is?" Laura set right back in once the android was gone. "It's a two hour drive and none of us exactly own cars."

"There is no way Fangs doesn't own some stupidly old and nice car but I understand your point," Danny conceded while willing herself to remain calm. The idea behind meeting in public was not turning this into a screaming match. "I'm buying one as soon as I get there, not an idiot, Hollis."

"Two whole hours!" Laura pushed the edges of acceptable noise levels and stopped to correct herself. "Do you actually see yourself driving for four hours just to see us?"

No, Danny didn't. It wasn't a problem she had to deal with for another few weeks, so she hadn't put some thought into if she could do it. If things got real bad, then Danny would make the trip. If there was danger or whatever.

"I see myself spending an entire weekend here, so it doesn't sound like sitting in my car for four hours straight," Danny argued back like she wasn't making it up as she went along. "It'll be fine, you're worrying for nothing."

Laura drained half of her sugar bomb in one go and sighed when she was done. "It'll feel weird, and do you seriously want to go work for your parents?"

Again, no, Danny didn't.

"It's what the Lit degree is for, Laura," Danny pointed out hopefully without sounding too condescending. "I assure you, I am not here for my health."

Laura slumped in her chair, folding her arms defensively. "I know, I just thought-"

"I'd hang around like a lapdog while you graduated?" Danny knew it wasn't the diplomatic thing to say. It wasn't kind, nor loving. Danny's head hurt, her hand still hurt from decking Casey Kirkland, and Laura was trying to guilt her out of a reasonably stable future. "There's no reason other than you both for me to stay and I can't have that. I won't be that person."

"Run for office in town, the villagers seem to like you," Laura suggested, barely kidding.

Danny wanted to throw up again, the villagers would burn her alive if they knew even the basic details about her. Then they would burn Laura, then Carmilla, the latter only for existing. They'd only kept the villagers out of Silas itself by a show of force and the missing persons cases virtually stopping. "I care about the Summer Society, you, and Carmilla. The rest of this school and everything surrounding it can burn for all I care."

The scars across her back hurt when it rained. The ribs Carmilla cracked while in her body itched like they were still healing. A thousand smaller scrapes and bruises never quite seemed to heal. Danny carried Carmilla's almost-dead body out of a crater when it felt like her muscles could offer any more strength. Laura threw herself into danger on a monthly basis, and it was never worth it to fight for some sense of self preservation.

"For the last four years, my life has been this campus, and I'm done fighting without any power behind it," Danny admitted the feeling of helplessness that crept in over her time at Silas. "I'm not going to convince the students of this school to overthrow the administration with the force of my videos journaling skills, I don't have super vampire powers, hell, I can't even knit like Perry can."

"Danny," Laura tried to interrupt. Danny wasn't having it, Laura wanted to have this fight, so they were having it.

"No, Laura, I am sick and tired of feeling so fucking helpless all the time and I'm not staying here for a minute longer than I have to," Danny finished, miraculously keeping her volume down. At least, she thought she did. People weren't staring.

"And you're just going to pack up and go? Leave everything and everyone you care about behind, never look back?" Laura had remembered she came here looking for a fight, apparently. "Because your relationship with your parents is so great that they can offer you enough money to run right the fuck away from here and into their arms? Sure, and I'm a fairy princess."

If there was one thing Danny could see as an end to her relationship with Laura, independent of Carmilla, it was the stubborn refusal to be wrong Laura developed over her first months at Silas. Especially about things she thought she knew the best. Like Danny.

"I need to leave so I'm not like Casey Kirkland," Danny wondered if Laura knew about him before he won valedictorian the day before, "he's going to take on another degree in something else because he's head of the Alchemy Club and he's got friends here and it's comfortable. Safe. He's going to stay and stagnate and slowly age until he's the thirty year old trying to party with freshmen."

Danny took a second to empty her mug and collect what she was going to say next in the right way because this was the bit where it could go really, super wrong for her. Laura waited patiently, a big fan of winning arguments via Carmilla or Danny giving out enough rope and hanging themselves.

"Next month, I'll be twenty-three, by the time you're done with your degree, I will be twenty-five. I will not be here when I'm officially mid-twenties and still a student," she let the threat go unspoken. "I want a future, a long term future. That isn't at Silas for me."

Laura didn't get angry.

"That isn't Carmilla and I for you," Laura filled in the gaps Danny didn't notice she'd left wide open. "Because she's a vampire and I'm some dumb kid with two whole years to tie you down when you want to be free. God, Danny when were you going to tell us you weren't serious here? Because I sure as hell was and I don't think Carmilla knows how to feel in half measures."

Danny had to take a deep breath and steady her nerves to stop herself from shouting in the coffee shop. Laura was trying her patience and she would not let it run out before Laura's determination to be done with the subject. One way or the other.

"Laura if I didn't think you'd both laugh at me, I'd propose tomorrow," Danny switch to the brutal, honest truth of the subject. "That doesn't mean that I wouldn't leave two days after my birthday as planned."

Laura didn't know what to do with that. She froze, causing Danny's heart to drop painfully out of her chest. Yeah, Laura laughing at her might be the good outcome. Danny hadn't considered that but Laura was happy with a relationship void of grand gestures and romantic declarations, she shouldn't have been surprised.

"Putting a ring on it doesn't mean you'll stay, so why bother staying together?"

Danny fell back in her wooden chair like Laura had kicked her in the chest. In a way, she had. A break, Danny was emotionally prepared for Laura to demand a break, or a halt in proceedings until Carmilla was well again, not a permanent break.

"Oh."

She couldn't think, couldn't get her racing thoughts under control. Retreat, run, don't look back. Can't fight.

Laura was left calling after her girlfriend's back as she barrelled out of the Clockwork.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Midday shone bright overhead. Danny's racing heart barely calmed itself as she tore away from the Clockwork and from Laura.

The pressure was suffocating, she couldn't breathe fast enough to feel like she wasn't about to faint.

Laura left her once, before they were actually dating, and she was apparently willing to do it again.

"The Alchemy Club! Home to Silas' newest valedictorian, and the home for your academic future!"

Danny stopped in her pissed off stalking across the campus. If she needed to vent, decking some jackasses from the Alchemy Club for their farming of freshmen test subjects for the next academic year was certainly the way to go. Especially with Casey 'Valedictorian' Kirkland grinning in the front of all his little acolytes.

“Lawrence! You hanging around for recruitment too?” Kirkland yelled, getting her annoyed attention. He barely flinched as she turned the frustrations and wounded pride that came with her morning directly on him. It was a minor miracle that the asshole didn’t spontaneously combust. “Summer Society heading upwards and onward when you leave and all that noise?”

Firstly, he said things like ‘and all that noise’. Secondly, Danny loved her Sisters and gave her time as a Summer the credit it deserved but she wasn’t going to be trotted out like a show pony to drive recruitment. Finally, Laura wanted her to sit around like a lapdog while she finished her time at Silas.

Danny wanted to deck him.

Only her phone informing her that she had a new message stopped her, broke the spiralling train on fury quickly.

Kirkland let her go with his usual manic smile, getting easily distracted by a young future freshman asking for advice on of all things, actual schoolwork.

‘Miss Lawrence, I have strived for months to get you to perform the correct actions. If I could have a moment of your time-’

Danny closed the message from J.P. without reading the rest of it. It did give her an idea of what to do about the problem with her other, not asking her about the future, girlfriend. Carmilla had a problem that Danny could fix. Or at the very least she could do something, anything about it right now. Anything to escape the crushing weight Laura had placed on her chest.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

  
Danny was perfectly amicable with Perry. Nothing against her, wasn't about to hang out with her outside of Laura. Danny recognised the role Perry played in the lives of her girlfriends' and that recognition was the sole reason why she didn't break down the door of the extra large dorm room the woman shared with LaFontaine.

Thankfully, Perry wasn't home at the moment. That would make things faster. LaFontaine had never once told Laura about their less than stellar relationship and Danny knew not to risk Perry finally noticing. The unfriendliness was best kept quiet.

Danny hammered on the door with her forearm, not willing to risk her knuckles on this little house call.

There was a crash, some assorted swearing, and then LaFontaine appeared at the door, staring at their phone like it personally attacked without provocation. They looked up, looked down, then back up again, and narrowed their eyes in suspicion.

"What?" Danny asked, losing all her build up anger at the unexpected question. "I haven't even said anything yet."

"Why is J.P. telling me to make you check your phone?"

Danny wished she'd never opened the message at all, and had already forgotten what the start of it said. "He's your pet possessed hard drive, not mine. I don't even know how he got my number."

LaFontaine did that thing where they stared at Danny until she was guilty about something she hadn't even done technically. "He was bugging me from the second I woke up, you say no to your laptop that's threatening file deletion if you don't comply."

"I don't have another person with total access to my shit, so no," Danny hit back, rolling her eyes. LaFontaine stepped back from the door and Danny actually duck to get in the damn thing. "Why is this so much lower than Laura and Carmilla's?"

LaFontaine retrieved their laptop, setting up at their desk while Danny closed the door and leaned against it with her arms folded.

"Your girlfriend's mother was running some psychological experiment or some bullshit, it doesn't bother anyone else in the building," LaFontaine replied sharply. Danny wondered if this was enough to claim 'I didn't start it' later when she was being pouted at for being anti-social. "If not J.P. being weird, then why are you here?"

"Carmilla's sick," Danny stated plainly. A vague mission statement never got anything done. LaFontaine stared at her like she was asking why they weren't curing cancer. "With all that blood you take and all those tests you do on her, then you must have some idea what's wrong."

LaFontaine slammed their laptop closed. Danny ignored it.

"You're the leading expert on vampires, so if not, why not?" Danny pushed.

"She's got the fucking flu Danny, she's not dying!"

"I don't care if she's not dying," Danny almost threatened. "At the very least, it's a chance for further scientific exploration. You might get a paper out of it."

The mocking tone at the end did not please LaFontaine. "If she's still sick in the morning, I'll head right on down and play doctor with the surly, occasionally violent vampire."

Danny pushed off the door to, she didn't know what. Loom imposingly probably.

"Go answer J.P.'s message and I promise I'll go look at Carmilla later tonight," LaFontaine dismissed her through a clenched jaw.

Danny left and deleted J.P.'s message on the way down the stairs.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

  
Wandering her way from the dorm she hated calling her second home to the Summer Society's waiting warm embrace.

The door opened and a roaring fire enveloped her senses as she ignored the unsorted mail still sitting on the table and went up to her room to sleep the rest of the day away. There was nothing else for it. Laura would hopefully call if Carmilla got worse. J.P. was incapable of making phone calls. None of the girls would let LaFontaine in.

Danny collapsed and pushed her previous plans to work in the nearest city to Silas from her mind. That wasn't good enough, wasn't directed enough.

Her rest was mercifully free of dreams and nightmares. When she woke, it was dark outside.

Danny stumbled out of bed, this time without a headache or nausea. She changed her shirt and decided to spend the the night after graduation night the same was she spent the night before graduation.

The Applied Chemistry building was the supposed new home of the Alchemy Club after the defeat and death of the Dean.

Like everyone else on campus, Danny didn't believe that for a second.

The little worms were still underneath the original shack the Alchemy Club was given, in the Cold War bunker built to last for centuries fully populated. Casey Kirkland, with his valedictorian medal and his miraculously healed jaw would be in the old headquarters. It was genuinely confusing to Danny why he wasn't insisting that his Club got a piece of the pie from the student-run bar.

The bartender changed once per month on average. Danny didn't investigate the cause any further and blessedly no one told Laura the place existed. LaFontaine generally had no clue why anyone would bother with alcohol and Perry would never give the girl an opportunity to see her drunk.

Danny dragged her lethargic feet up the seven storeys of stairs in the septagonal building, smelling the fumes grow denser and denser as she rose.

The bar was lit entirely by neon tubes and LED Christmas lights built up over decades of student love and attention. Half-assed, but love all the same. It was filled with younger students, freshmen coming from the US going nuts over the lower drinking age and juniors pre-drinking for their senior year ahead. Graduation was daunting at Silas, if only because most employers weren't looking for Advanced Siege Tactics in the modern day. Maybe the military. The really weird military that dealt with aliens and whatnot, Danny figured. If that existed.

"Sour Pear, Lawrence?"

Danny wished there were people outside of her girlfriends who used her given name, her last name was sounding more and more like a death knell. God damn, she was going to take a damn job for her parent's publishing company. She shook her head at the bartender on duty.

"Something sweet?" Danny didn't care what, not any more. She sat herself on an open barstool and slumped onto the bar itself. Some cash hastily stuck into her pockets made its way to the hard wooden surface though she had no memory of removing it herself. The bright red drink looked like it could kill her and she drank it quickly. "More please."

Years of responsibility washed away as she drank head first into a third hangover in as many days. What a great way to end her college career.

Six more cocktails and who knew how long later.

Danny nearly jumped out of her chair when her phone started ringing. If J.P. somehow found a way to reliably translate his text to speech, Danny was throwing her phone after whomever was the drunken daring doer of the night as they sailed down all seven storeys to the fine cobblestone below.

It was Laura. Proceeded by a flurry of messages that all amounted to 'please pick up, I'm begging you' which was worrying. Also, the words were swimming.

"Didn't we kind of break up?" Danny began with, because alcohol was not her friend. Ever. "I think that happened."

"We did not, asshole," Laura snapped. Danny perked up at the panic coming through the line from her girlfriend. "Carmilla got worse, LaF's not answering, and no one knows where Perry is. Help, please."

Danny was on her feet and heading for the stairs when the building started to vibrate beneath her.

"I'll be there soon," she signed off distractedly. Laura thanked her, told her she loved her, that there was no way she was letting distance take Danny away from her.

Danny heard none of it.

The ground was shaking, other patrons of the bar started to notice it while Danny hung up on Laura. She walked slowly but surely to the edge of the building that had taken hundreds of lives. The moon rose steadily, the air grew suddenly hot, Danny's feet failed her as she got close to her stone lip of the building.

Her hands took the brunt of the damage, palms scraping violently against the smooth stone. Danny stared down at the cobblestone as it fractured.

The cracking lines spread out from the bottom of the Applied Chemistry building, stretching out until they threatened the surrounding buildings.

The other people at the bar went for the stairs in a group, trampling each other in their haste. Danny got to her feet, planting them in the same spot she'd seen countless other spend their last moments. The building rumbled and shook so violently that Danny was sure there was nothing she could do to save herself from the inevitable collapse.

Danny took a deep breath and suddenly stopped worrying about tomorrow.

Then the Applied Chemistry building exploded.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Hello from the other side."

Danny was not shocked that Adele was greeting her into the afterlife, but to be singing as well felt a little tactless.

Danny opened her eyes and wondered why death felt a lot like a hangover. Whether she thought it was too harsh or not harsh enough, she couldn't tell because her head hurt and the bright lights were not helping matters.

"I must have called a thousand times."

Stomach roiling, Danny groaned and moved around in the absurdly comfortable coffin or whatever she was put in. Danny promptly left the warmth of the whatever and was met with a hard surface that felt remarkable like the floor in her bedroom. Adele continued singing while Danny's vision cleared.

The brightness was the sun and her head was pounding because she had a hangover, not because she exploded on top of the Applied Chemistry building.

That would be ridiculous, even for Silas University.

Danny got to her feet with her legs tangled in her blankets and fell rather than moved to shut off the damn clock radio. Her stomach informed her that she did not historically do well with hangovers and she slipped to the floor with all her concentration focused on not throwing up in the very near future.

She quietly cursed her own long legs and the baby giraffe like stumbling she used to do when she was younger. Now, Danny Lawrence was used to being lanky and only tripped over herself when she was hungover or concussed.

The urge to vomit gradually went away, a first in her drinking history. Her workout water bottle was lying next to her bedside table and pulled herself up until she wouldn't be drowning herself trying to stop the dehydration from getting any worse. As she was lying on the floor trying to recover from her own wild night out after graduation, Danny wondered what the odds were that her subconscious correctly guessed which song her clock radio was going to wake her up with.

Then again, with it being a chart topping song, it being played frequently on the radio wasn't exactly an insane suggestion.

Danny was going to kill whichever one of her girlfriends changed her ring-tone to actual ringing. It sucked when she wasn't hungover and now it was like a thousand tiny drills cracking through her skull to bore into her brain.

She forced herself up just far enough to blindly grab her phone from her bedside table. Laura's smiling face greeted her and Danny really didn't want to deal with the asshole who was physically incapable of being hungover while she was fighting her own guts for every vomit-free moment.

"Morning," she managed around another groan. Laura was going to be insufferably smug and bright, Danny could feel it, could half remember it.

"Good morning!" Laura was smug and bright and Danny was going to break up with her as soon as she felt she could speak without throwing up. Sometime in the afternoon. "How's my favourite graduate?"

Wait. What?

"Did you stand up and make yourself worse? I can't have you both sick and-"

"You want to meet me at the cafe?" Danny ventured, interrupting Laura and making herself feel physically sick for a whole different reason.

The Applied Chemistry building blowing up was one level of beyond ridiculous, so discordant with how the school worked that Danny's first inklings of a hypothesis seemed sane.

Laura was audibly taken aback, "how did you know?"

Danny remembered her hazy dream, the relatively nice bit that stretched far enough back that she still didn't remember the night of her graduation properly. Before she remembered the fight her and Laura had. The one Laura was now asking her out to continue.

"Lucky guess," she answered instead of her two leading theories. "Go ahead and I'll meet you there once I'm done heaving my lungs out."

Laura made the same vaguely disgusted sound and Danny took a vicious measure of pleasure in the noise. She didn't have time for understanding girlfriend time while she felt so bad, and Laura knew she was hungover and still wanted to start the damn fight again.

Danny's reasons for being at the bar on top of the Applied Chemistry building hit her like a brick to the back of the head.

Her first theory was looking more and more likely than her second, with her newly forming third theory settling in between them.

Some kind of purgatory situation was her immediate bet, with insanity as defined by Ben Franklin, Einstein, Narcotics Anonymous, and Rita Mae Brown coming a distant second.

Limping behind like her patience with J.P.'s whatever the fuck he wanted was either seeing the future or literally repeating the past. Danny counted them both under the same umbrella.

Precognition was certainly more likely than a fucking time loop.

 


	2. Chapter 2

'I must insist that you answer me, Miss Lawrence. I fear more than my own sanity is a risk and I do not enjoy watching two people I consider to be friends dying day after day.'

Danny stopped at the exit to the Summer Society's main house, a hand resting on the usual massive pile of mail to steady herself. She'd lost the war with her hangover and that always left her dizzy. J.P. didn't message her that in the premonition or last round of purgatory or whatever she was going through. Dismissing him out of habit started to burn with regret before her silenced phone vibrated again.

'You are the optimum candidate and I will take stronger measures if you continue to ignore me,' the next message read. Danny rolled her eyes and pushed it from her mind. Round Two or Possibly Three with Laura awaited her and maybe she could amuse J.P. with her android suspicions.

The walk didn't give her any evidence that it wasn't yesterday today.

Again.

Danny wished the Lawrence family had a storied past that involved more alcohol and some drug use like the terrifying Hollis family tree. Breaking up might be preferable to allowing Laura to pass on her genetics.

J.P. kept her phone buzzing long enough that Danny stopped to turn it off. Then she considered her location with regards to the Clockwork and the dorm with her sick vampire. Laura wanted a fight. Carmilla was sick.

The foggy memories scattered when she tried to grasp them, searching for if Carmilla was stable when Danny blew up. With the Applied Chemistry building. Danny decided Laura could wait for her fight.

The dorm room was one generally assigned to the more expendable freshmen and the least passive sophomores through seniors that the initial interview process didn't catch. Danny attended the stupid students in positions of power meetings begrudgingly and only because Perry threatened her vaguely, she knew exactly how little security the building had. After the reconstruction, it only got worse. Now the doors didn't even pretend to lock.

Being threatened with evisceration via vampire claws did wonders for the night time interruption rate, still didn't ease Danny's concern for their safety. She didn't dare voice the concerns to anyone but Carmilla.

Agreeing on things before their trip into the Library revolved around caring for Laura. This connection strengthened over time and closeness.

Now they were in perfect agreement that Carmilla herself was better protection than anything else Silas could offer in the way of the a door with a lock. Carmilla was out of commission. Danny felt the need to check that her rage in the premonition or whatever blinded her to yesterday. Or today. Shouldn't have decided body shots were a good idea. Especially after the whiskey.

The stairs were a challenge for the first time. Despite carrying Carmilla up them twice, they were never a problem before. Danny nearly lost the battle with nausea for the second time that day. Third overall for her experience with this particular day.

The dorm was quiet, which never happened. The entire building felt deserted and the burst of adrenaline that rushed through her veins made Danny long for her move away from this place. Laura could yell all she wanted.

Their door didn't lock. It didn't have one. Danny nudged it open with her foot and quickly scanned the room for a threat. Those were always loud and unable to utilise stealth properly. A perfect weakness. Silas attracted more drama majors than Danny thought possible.

Carmilla groaned, sounding resoundingly pathetic. Danny rolled her eyes and stumbled over the discarded pair of jeans she remembered Carmilla wearing last night, or the night before. Headache, no, focus.

"Go argue, I'm fine, Laura," Carmilla whined, sounding anything but fine. Danny's instincts kicked in, thankfully different from her finely honed fight or flight reflex. She was in the room and sitting on the edge of the bed with her eyebrows drawn together with concern before the lethargic vampire reacted. "Hi."

The greeting came out weak. Carmilla was covered with blankets and had the knitted comedic vampire doll Perry made her for the previous Christmas clutched in her arms. Definitely wasn't expecting Danny over today.

"You look like a dead woman," she replied with a crooked grin. Carmilla coughed, dry and terrifying. Danny had a little sister that coughed like that. "Sound like one, too."

"You have a date," Carmilla managed to say before some more coughing. "Laura's mad."

"If she thinks it's okay to leave you alone while you're like this, then hell yeah she's mad," Danny shot back, fire lighting in her generally unused indignation reflexes. The fight at the Clockwork would be longer today than it was on that other today.

Struggling free of her blanket cocoon, Carmilla's bloodshot eyes glared up at her. Much, much longer. Danny carefully recalled her previous failed attempt to get LaFontaine to play doctor better than they were. Carmilla was worse than Laura had led Danny to believe. Laura took illness with a grain of a salt rubbed deeply into the wounded area, anything less than hospitalisation wasn't cause for alarm.

"It's some bad blood, not the plague, Danny," came the roughened reply to Danny's worrying. Which made things a whole lot more serious in Danny's eyes.

"You can hear yourself right, Carmilla?" Danny stressed the name, hoping to jolt some concern from her girlfriend. Who used her given name. During daylight hours and not while having an emotional breakdown. "Do you need to-?"

"No!" Carmilla snapped sharply. The fake exterior of indifference to her own suffering vanished like it always did when Danny or Laura threatened to take her burdens from her. Danny stopped the smirk that wanted to come out. "I need time to sweat it out or whatever. I don't need your blood."

'I am not confident in my self-control at the moment,' Danny translated silently. Out loud, "I was going to suggest I fetch you some fresh stuff."

"Liar."

Danny resisted the urge to check Carmilla's forehead for heat or clamminess. Vampire physiology was a complete mystery to everyone but LaFontaine. She doubted Carmilla cared to listen to the litany of new biological discoveries made every other week. Laura or Perry were keeping track of them, probably.

"I'm not using all of it right now."

Carmilla kept on glaring. "I'll be fine tomorrow."

Danny frowned. "You said that last night."

Carmilla's phone rang again, almost vibrating off the table. Danny broke the staring contest to answer it, rolling her eyes when she saw it was Laura.

"Yes, my phone is off. No, Carmilla is absolutely not fine, Hollis," she barked down the line without Laura getting a word in. "I'll meet you in a few damn minutes, then we're having a long talk about the meaning of the word 'okay'."

Danny hung up to Carmilla's amused eyebrow raise. The effect was lessened greatly by the coughing fit that followed.

"As for you," Carmilla recoiled at the barely concealed rage in Danny's voice, "Laura will be back with fresh blood while I strong arm LaFontaine."

"Can you get Mittens to film that?"

Carmilla's odd relationship with Perry confused Danny to no end.

"No. I love you, go back to sleep."

With that, Danny was gone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The owners of the Clockwork were mercifully absent so Danny didn't even bother with ordering anything this time.

Slowly over the course of her morning she'd grown more and more accustomed to the least ridiculous of her theories. Time loop, which only she and J.P. seemed to notice. Better than purgatory, not as good as sudden precognitive powers.

When she came across Kirkland promoting the Alchemy Club, she was sorely tempted to re-deck Casey in his stupid smug face. Her aching knuckles told her that a weapon of some sort would work better tomorrow if tomorrow was today again.

Laura was sitting exactly where she was yesterday, chocolate explosion gone and arms folded. Face flushed red with either anger or embarrassment, Laura was not impressed with Danny's appearance regardless.

The walk to their table felt like she was going toward her own doom. Danny checked herself and wondered if slightly less over-dramatic girlfriends would curb her own descent into the madness. Doubtful.

"She's fine," started Laura, the 'do not challenge me' coming across so clearly that Danny nearly stumbled sitting down. "It's the flu, she's not dying."

"You don't know that," Danny growled. Laura recoiled. "She's a vampire. They don't get the flu. The fact that she's sick at all is terrifying in and of itself, Laura."

Laura leaned back, her hands coming up to rub down her face. It was then that Danny noticed the beginnings of dark circles underneath her eyes and the shallow breathing Laura had been doing since Danny sat down. "I really want her to be fine."

The quiet whine made Danny's heart constrict the same way it did when hearing Carmilla's sick voice. The anger flowed out of her with a deep sigh. Laura's desire for a fight she could win made more sense now. Danny's girlfriend liked being in control of her fate and her want to have Carmilla and Danny with her for the foreseeable future was one of the least challenging aspects of Laura's life to keep stable.

"I don't want her dead but the fact is that she's sick and it's only getting worse," she tried a different line of argument, hoping for better results, "she had a cold last night and now she doesn't sound like she's going to be talking for much longer."

Laura squirmed, unaccustomed to being wrong on these kinds of matters. Danny tried not to take pleasure from it. She failed.

"LaFontaine looked at her-"

"They did?" Danny's chest was on fire for a painful second.

"Last night while you were off trying for alcohol poisoning." When Laura decided she wanted a fight, she was getting one. "Very responsible, great way to start you big grown-up life away from us silly students."

There was no way Laura could remember yesterday's version of today, Danny consoled herself, this was a continuation of their graduation night argument and nothing more. "You find a favourable reason for me to stay here that isn't 'my girlfriends' still go here' and I will do it."

Laura blinked.

Danny, after accepting her situation, decided she was going to have a few shots at getting this little chat right with Laura. The delicacy of the question at hand made her determined to find a way this could work.

"Take on another degree," said Laura.

"Not for all the money in the world."

The pout was back. Not the right answer then.

"I will be back tomorrow to try again," Danny threw at Laura, saluting her goodbye and reminding herself to duck at LaFontaine's door.

"Danny!"

Danny ignored her.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"Hey Lawrence!"

Kirkland. Now with cronies.

Danny considered grabbing a couple of Summer girls tomorrow morning. The idea crumbled when she remembered the gang warfare guidelines the administration had started to actually enforce since Kirsch and the Zetas got into an all-out brawl with the Casey and the Alchemy Club. Getting all of her hair removed as punishment wasn't a toll she was willing to pay for having backup.

As it stood, Kirkland was beyond easy to catch in the jaw with her right elbow as she passed him on the way to the dorms.

"Fuck you Lawrence!"

Danny ignored the unfamiliar pain in her arm and continued on as if he wasn't there.

The dorm building was as unlocked as ever. Danny randomly kicked open dorm room doors on her way up to LaFontaine and Perry's floor, satisfying an idle wondering she'd had for months about Laura and Carmilla's room.

Every last one of them opened without a hint of resistance. Danny was taking an axe to her girlfriends' door when she was certain the day would count and would gallantly offer to replace it for them. With a lock that worked. And another one. Possibly some kind of latch and padlock situation as well. She had plenty of time to decide.

J.P. would be contacting everyone he could to get her attention. Danny didn't care. She was having the rest of today to fuck around. Tomorrow would be another today and then Danny would care.

Maybe.

Barely stopping herself from kicking down the door, Danny knocked firmly but not violently on the door. Knowing LaFontaine was in there was enough to fuel her frustrations with Laura and Carmilla a little bit longer.

"What?" LaFontaine said loudly while throwing the door open. They settled into a furious glare when it became clear that Danny was the one at the door. "Fucking turn your fucking phone back fucking on! You overgrown, under disciplined, all around annoying fucking giant!"

This totally counted as 'they started it'. Regardless of the J.P. factor.

"Pull your self-satisfied, rabble rousing, piece of shit coward head out of your ass and go fucking check on Carmilla before I come back for whatever the fuck you said to Laura to make her worry so damn much about the future!"

"She's fine and I didn't say anything to baby Hollis," LaFontaine continued, less angry now that some shouting was done and Perry was on the way because she had a sixth sense about Danny and LaFontaine disagreeing in earshot of other people. "If your girlfriend wants things you don't, then maybe you should back off for a while."

If Lola Perry didn't pick that moment to appear at the end of the weirdly long hallway, Danny was sure she would have decked LaFontaine with or without the knowledge that today would functionally not exist tomorrow. Consequences be dammed.

"Carmilla is unconscious and I can't wake her up and why are you both shouting?" Perry wasn't yelling. Perry went unsettlingly calm when someone was sick. Danny's heart dropped through the floor and LaFontaine barely made it out of the room before Danny found her feet and followed close behind.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Danny checked the watch her mother bought her to celebrate her first time voting and noted that she was here confronting LaFontaine nearly a full hour later than she was yesterday. Carmilla was supposedly fine when they argued before, and was unconscious only a single hour later. Whatever was wrong had to be something that could get dramatically worse in minutes.

This line of thought didn't occur to Danny in the three storey climb to Laura and Carmilla's room. It happened later, when single-minded panic wasn't dominating her every thought and feeling.

Danny wasn't a slow person, but it felt like an eternity to make the trip between the two dorm rooms. The panic wasn't this bad when she knew she was about to die by werewolves, that was a peaceful moment of great pain. This was one of her loves dying.

Suddenly the presumed fact that tomorrow would be today again was all the more a question rather than a certainty. Tomorrow, if tomorrow wasn't actually tomorrow, she would answer J.P. as soon as she beat the hangover monster.

The door was not locked. Carmilla was indeed unconscious and her favourite blood mug was lying shattered beside the bed. Danny wanted to throw herself onto her girlfriend like a dramatic hero in a romance novel. To cry and scream at the universe until her lover was better. That wasn't helpful right now. She put aside their personal differences and did every minute thing LaFontaine said to do or not do.

Cradling Carmilla's limp body so LaFontaine could check her over only revealed that Carmilla felt the same nearly dead in her arms as she did last time. Perry was outside, on a call to Laura, and totally not avoiding the potential for death in the room. Danny would have to comfort her later if this didn't get worse, she knew from experience that LaFontaine got distracted easily and sometimes forgot to be a friend. Danny didn't hold that against them too badly, she understood avoidance better than most people.

She'd achieved new heights in barely acknowledging that something had to change after she graduated. Danny wished she had the last week to do over again, then she could find literally anything to do in the small town adjacent to the Silas campus until Laura graduated. As it stood, her hands were tied without the job her parents offered her, so she had as good as no options.

All this worrying came after LaFontaine declared that Carmilla was alive. As alive as a vampire could be.

"Her lips are blue," hissed Perry when she rejoined them. LaFontaine had cleared something suspicious out of Carmilla's mouth that they declared a potential cause. Danny stared at them blankly until LaFontaine continued that they had no good idea what it could be, let alone what it could possibly mean in terms of Carmilla's illness.

Danny was left with Perry and Carmilla's unconscious body.

"Yes they are," Danny agreed distantly, her attention on what little warmth remained in Carmilla's body. Laura would already be beside herself with worry, stumbling her way back home through terror and tears. "They do that whenever we go swimming in colder water."

Perry looked every bit the worried mother. Danny envied the natural ability Perry had to care wholeheartedly about people with little protection of her own heart.

"This is normal then?"

Danny sighed deeply. There was no way this was normal or natural. Still. "She's come back from worse and she'll never hear the end of it if she dies of the flu of all things.” Laura would be ranting at her grave in incredulity if nothing else. Danny would be angry at the time together they lost.

"My girlfriend is technically dead already, this is just a weird quirk of hers. You should see the routine she goes through when I nick myself with a knife while cooking," Danny rambled, unaware of the tears welling up in her eyes. Today wasn't going any better than yesterday's today, even with Casey Kirkland probably still laying unconscious at the Alchemy Club membership drive. "I've been told that my blood is especially nice to eat."

Perry was silent for a second, long enough for Danny to start blushing. They weren't totally open with their friends about the games of Hunter and Prey Danny and Carmilla played when the vampire felt the need to hunt for something, anything.

"I'm going to keep my sanity and presume you already offered a Lawrence blood detox when you were down here before?"

Danny smiled, amused affectionately like Laura whenever Perry got high pitched. “She didn’t think she could stop herself. Should have been more worried about that I guess.”

The distance and detachment held long enough for Danny to turn her phone back on without looking at it, without being consciously aware that she was doing it. That happened to Danny, with increasing frequency.

She missed her sword and vowed to remember it the next morning. After finding time to fix her disappointing lack of resilience in the face of a mild hangover. A moderate hangover. Not the worst hangover her poor pleasure in careful measures body had ever experienced.

Danny wished she was a Hollis.

“Laura will be here soon,” Perry tried to break Danny's attention on Carmilla's unconscious form. "How did your talk go?"

Danny's head snapped up to set Perry with a furious look. "Did all that shit come from you?"

Laura didn't think about the future, not long term anyway. Perry's demeanour turned from concerned to flustered.

"No," Perry lied, and blushed with the immediate shame, "not exactly!"

Carmilla ought to have woken up considering how hard Danny gripped her shoulders. The urge to react to problems with violence was an ever-increasing problem in Danny's life. She might take Perry up on her offer of mutual meditation once she was done not punching the woman in the face.

"What does that mean?" Danny asked, low and slow.

Perry caught the potential for how badly this could go. "I asked what your plans were during the ceremony, Laura didn't know and I think she's a little worried about you."

Tomorrow, Danny would deal with Laura's concerns better. Tomorrow, she would pretend that Carmilla got worse when she confronted LaFontaine. Tomorrow, she'd ask J.P. what he thought was happening. Tomorrow, that was tomorrow.

"Where were you before?" Danny changed tracks, her mind swapping from violence to information gathering mode. "Why did you come and check on Carmilla?"

The more Danny could learn about today, the better.

"Laura's worried about you both. I was going to go check on you at that overgrown madhouse you call a sorority if Carmilla was stable."

Perry put on her best maternal voice, it didn't work on Danny normally.

"What were you doing an hour and a half ago?" If Perry thought she was crazy, Danny didn't care. "It's important, Lola."

Perry wasn't listening. She always paid attention when her given name was used. Perry was instead staring at Carmilla like the Loch Ness Monster had taken up residence on her face. Danny frowned and looked down at the vampire in her arms.

Carmilla wasn't moving.

"Her heart doesn't beat, how would we know if?"

Perry didn't seem capable of finishing her thought.

"She's still breathing and her heart kind of beats. Very, very slowly," Danny reassured her while gently brushing the hair from her ill girlfriend's face. "I'm going to leave her with you for today. Tomorrow I have to know, where were you before?"

"Why?"

"So I can get you to talk LaFontaine into taking this seriously," said Danny. She kissed Carmilla's forehead and laid her down to rest.

 

 

* * *

 

 

J.P. has blown up her phone so hard that it takes a solid minute for the thing to unlock.

More than a thousand messages awaited her, ranging from theories about what was happening, a detailed account of what he had done to get her in the loop with him, and an odd near-essay on checking one's mail before acting in the morning. Danny soundly ignored everything but the one that said Carmilla had died more than three hundred times over already.

J.P. apologised again and again after telling her that. Wishing that there was something he could have done to save her and that a sword through his laptop home would not help the situation, Miss Lawrence, so please do not try.

Carmilla wasn't getting better and J.P. was yet to convince LaFontaine that it was more than the flu.

Laura and Danny herself had the same argument each and every day leading to Laura breaking down completely in LaFontaine and Perry's arms. Laura lost them both every single day since Danny's graduation.

Danny blew up every night along with the Applied Chemistry building. That was what triggered the day to start over.

Therefore, that was the place to start.

Settling herself into a night time watch atop the administrative building, Danny watched the septagonal building with an attention to detail required to date Laura Hollis and Carmilla Karnstein.

I've got this, she told herself while waiting for the inevitable bang.

The cold running fear that Carmilla was dead and Laura was left alone and heartbroken was one she expected.

The seventeen bottles of beer she brought with her to her stakeout were welcomed as the day went into the night. She contemplated calling Laura, leaving her post to comfort her, to say that she would stay by her side forever and ever.

'I believe it to be the Alchemy Club,' said J.P.'s final message of the night. When Danny saw Casey Kirkland dashing out of the Applied Chemistry building, she had to agree with his assessment.

She'd take her sword with her tomorrow.

Threaten LaFontaine.

Fight Laura better.

Kill Casey Kirkland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait.


	3. Chapter 3

"Hello from the other side," her radio alarm clock blared into the silence of the morning.

Danny didn’t explode along with the Applied Chemistry building last night. The headache was a welcome relief from the weight of Carmilla lying dead. Poisoned, probably.

When Laura called, Danny would ask her if she genuinely doesn’t suffer from hangovers or if she had a magical cure that she was withholding from Danny.

Giving in to the hangover, Danny threw up, slammed down three glasses of water, and was downing a probable overdose of painkillers when Laura’s call came in.

She left her clock radio to play, curious about which song was after Adele. Listening to the song the whole way through would at the very least get it out of her head for the day.

Danny pulled on her best combat-ready clothing, hung her sword from her hip, and answered Laura’s call before it actually started ringing.

“Hey, Hollis,” she began in her brightest voice. “Do you want to go for coffee?”

Laura faltered, “yeah sure. Weird, that’s what I was calling you for.”

“How strange, meet you there!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The messages came in from J.P. early. Now that he knew she was a willing participant in stopping the loop, he was less panicked in the morning.

‘Miss Lawrence, I shall continue my on-going efforts with LaFontaine. Together we can save Miss Karnstein and stop the madness,’ his first and thus far only message read. Danny, despite herself, had started to develop the same ability to discern the man’s tone from his overly formal wording.

“Mornin’ Boss,” one of the Summer girls chirped at her, alerting Danny to the fact that her timing must be a little different today. “Did you check the mail yet?”

Scarlett. That was her name. Skinny, dark blonde hair, and an aversion to physical activity. Danny had no idea why she would want to be in the Summer Society.

“Got to go skewer a nerd,” Danny said without looking at the girl. “Maybe later.”

Scarlett’s protests followed her out of the building but Danny didn’t hear her.

The Alchemy Club wasn’t out begging for new initiates today. The relevance of something in her day being different didn’t hit Danny until the crowd outside the Clockwork struck her as odd.

Firstly, very few of the collected people seemed to be stoned out of their minds. The Clockwork appealed to a highly specific clientele beside the small market for people avoiding their sensitive vampire girlfriend.

Then there was the screaming. The wild, screeching screams of a man intermingled with some in the crowd gasping and at least one person fainting.

Finally, the crowd parted for Danny. The sorrow written on their faces steeled at the sight of her sword. The screaming continued until it was drowned out in Danny’s ears by the stunned silence of the crowd.

“Her girlfriend could have fucking killed me yesterday!”

Danny recognised the voice immediately. Drawing her sword, the people started to leap aside and pull the unaware away as if she was going to stab and slash her way to Casey Kirkland.

Kirkland was standing over a person.

His back was to her, an empty vial held in one hand with a clean, sharp, large kitchen knife in the other. Danny’s brain short circuited at the bloodless yet utter stillness of Laura’s body on the ground in front of him. He turned. Danny stopped thinking.

“She’ll be fine tomorrow. I’ve got all day to think about subduing her tomorrow. It’ll all be okay tomorrow, you won’t remember this,” he pleaded, backing away from Danny and her glinting sword. The sunlight flickered against the blade and Danny knew exactly how to swing to kill a man quick.

Kirkland didn’t take the chance, running away as fast as his weak little legs could carry him.

Danny ran track.

There was a brief chase. Kirkland made it around the back of the Clockwork.

He stopped when he started to wheeze. Danny only knew where to stab him for a slow, inevitable death.

Something came over her, more than seeing red.

“Lawrence, think about this!” Kirkland screamed, his voice cracking and his breathing laboured to the point of hyperventilation. “Do you really want to be a murderer?”

“You are.”

Danny lunged forward in a flash, catching Kirkland in the thigh with the tip of her blade. She then raked it up to slide into his chest underneath his ribs, twisting it so hard her wrist cried out at the strain.

Kirkland, bleeding out and unable to breath or move most of his body, raised his knife and caught Danny in the side of her neck.

Darkness overcame them both.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“Hello from the other side.”

Danny woke up drowning in her own blood.

It wasn't really there. But the blood felt like it was slipping down her throat and killing her again.

Danny hadn't even opened her eyes yet and she already knew she preferred to be blown up than stabbed through the neck.

Weirdly, Danny now thought it was Kirkland causing the time loop. She communicated as much to J.P. and urged him to try Perry rather than LaFontaine to focus on Carmilla’s poisoning or exposure to vampire plague or whatever was going on there today. Danny had business elsewhere, starting with violently throwing her clock radio out her window with the pinned open curtains. It wasn’t until she heard the wailing of her fellow hungover graduates that the nausea and headache reminded her rudely that they existed.

Tomorrow, she would work on that. Meditation maybe.

For now she had a phone call to answer.

“Hey Laura,” she mumbled, purposefully distracted with getting ready for Kirkland hunting for the day. If the tactic also cleared her mind of the imaged she was met with yesterday, then Danny wasn’t going to complain. Now, she noted bitterly, she knew what both Laura and Carmilla looked like dead. “We should talk more about last night, I think I fucked up a bit.”

Laura stuttered adorably. Danny wondered if she could muster the strength to fight Laura on the future again with her dead body flashing at her each and every time she blinked. Carmilla felt indestructible, regardless of what J.P. told her. Laura was just as painfully human as Danny and it made her a much larger target for Kirkland to keep Danny away from his plans.

“That would be great actually,” Laura said eventually. Her voice lost all the fight in it. Maybe Danny had put her finger on a potential solution to their small future problem. “The Clockwork?”

Danny, mid-painkiller, considered it.

Kirkland obviously knew that’s what their plans were originally. Would it be better to keep to the schedule or to deviate as early as possible?

“I will come to you.”

“At the dorm? I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Danny could hear Laura biting her lower lip while she re-planed her attack.

“I miss Carmilla, she was sick last night and I need vampire cuddles.” Danny went gooey, Laura rarely knew what to do with that. It was like she’d never been so open about being in love before. If it wasn’t a minefield worse than the one she was already picking through, Danny would ask about Laura’s parents. The stories about the extended family were terrifying.

One potential break-up argument at a time.

“Oh,” Laura breathed out. Carmilla groaned in the background, pleased. “She’s fine, I think.”

Danny rolled her eyes, knowing it was a lie. Her initial assessment of Laura’s flippancy toward Carmilla’s mystery illness was that Perry and LaFontaine were going to take over once Carmilla’s girlfriends weren’t in the immediate vicinity to tease her until the end of time. Now she knew that wasn’t what was going on, Danny had a whole host of questions for Laura. ‘What the fuck?’ being the first.

Danny didn’t bother with closing her curtains. She was used to the pain on just day four of this day. The sword had tasted blood, so it was totally coming with her.

“Mail for you,” Scarlett attacked her with her stupid voice and annoying tone. Danny was generally more fair to her girls but damn did this one grate on her nerves when she was already in a bad mood. “Might be important.”

“Thank you, Scarlett.” Danny brushed by her and pointedly ignored the pile of letters sitting by the door. “Busy right now.”

Laura was absolutely terrible at judging how long things took, a quick detour to the Alchemy Club’s stand wouldn’t delay her for too long.

Kirkland could be real dumb and decide that if he went about his day like normal, Danny would forgive him for killing Laura. Or Laura would forgive him for killing Laura. Danny didn’t care one little bit how Casey Kirkland’s mind worked.

The walk was short, Danny resisted jogging. Kirkland might run again, might have his lackeys guarding him. No sense in being tired for no reason.

The stall was up and the Alchemy Club was lethargically handing out fliers out to unsuspecting future freshmen. They were collectively devoid of enthusiasm and clearly without leadership.

Danny stared at them from afar. Watching, waiting for Kirkland to show his stupid face.

After who knew how long, Danny’s phone started to vibrate. Laura calling.

The nerds were fine for the minute, especially without their fearless leader in sight.

Leaving them alone couldn’t hurt. Danny declined Laura’s call with a message that she got to talking with a fellow graduate and sent J.P. an update on Kirkland. Mostly his clear and obvious guilt. Though why he would purposefully create a time loop that ended with him blowing up along with the septagonal Applied Chemistry build was an absolute mystery to both her and J.P.

‘Miss Perry said some wonderful words at the bonfire last night,’ her companion through time replied when she was on her approach to the dorm building. ‘Three pyres in one night is more than most students could ignore. It was rather touching.’

The loop wasn’t caused by something anyone did or didn’t do alone. Kirkland was dead too and the day didn’t reset after Danny died. Finding Kirkland during the day and interrogating him until she had the full story leapt up her to-do list priorities. She was never going to get to deal with her pitiful hangover situation each morning.

‘Are you sure the explosion is the last thing to happen?’

Danny had to know, a clear time line of events would be essential long-term.

‘I believe so,’ he replied.

‘Carmilla’s been poisoned. Her being out of commission can’t be a coincidence.’

‘I concur.’

‘Kirkland?’

‘Unclear at present.’

Danny pushed open the painfully unguarded door to the building that Kirkland had no problems invading. Part one of the rant Laura and Carmilla would be treated to after Danny was done stopping the Alchemy Club would be ‘Congratulations On Moving To A Different Residence, Now With Locks!’

‘Anyone in the Alchemy Club could have acquired the poisons. Mister Kirkland may have his subordinates working with him.’

“Of course there’s more than one asshole to remove. Excellent,” she muttered to herself while ascending the many stairs.

Laura sat outside the dorm room door, knees drawn to her chest. Danny approached her slowly, unwilling to startle her when she was already fixing for a fight.

When she broke free of time, their relationship would have to change. Danny didn’t like the realisation, but knew the apprehension she felt wasn’t normal. Wasn’t healthy.

“I have to go, you know that.” Laura’s head snapped at Danny’s words, tears in her eyes. “We’ll fix this, fix her. But then I have to go.”

Laura’s sadness turned to anger. “Just go then. Don’t bother.”

Perhaps not anger. Despair.

Danny couldn’t stand to see Laura breaking down. Moving quick, she was on her knees next to Laura. She held out her arms for Laura to collapse into.

“When did she get worse?” Danny whispered into Laura’s hair after a long minute of listening to her love sob into her chest. “It’ll be okay in the morning, I promise.”

Surprisingly strong fingers dug into Danny’s jacket, Laura’s free hand curling around the sword tied to her hip.

“Why are you armed?” The crying mess was over now. Danny knew Laura, knew that she developed the ability to shut down her feelings and move on to the next problem when it presented itself.

Danny thought about it for so much longer than Laura would appreciate. “Casey Kirkland killed you yesterday. He’s going to kill Carmilla today. He might know I’m coming for him tomorrow. I’d rather be armed before then.”

The grief at the possibility of a future without Laura and Carmilla snapped something in her mind. The urge to do something, anything, pushed at the edge of her awareness all the time, encouraging her to fight back with fists and blades. Danny fought it every minute of every day, the desire always pushing to make her do something violent she couldn’t take back. Well, today was now every day and Danny didn’t want to fight the feeling anymore.

“What?” Laura might have sounded confused, Danny didn’t hear her.

“Go bully LaFontaine into figuring out what Carmilla’s been poisoned with,” Danny ordered with a quiet authority that even Laura felt the urge to bend to. “Make sure J.P.’s in on the process.”

Danny gently pushed Laura away and settled on what she was going to do with her day. If Kirkland was going to hide, then Danny was going to go looking.

“Danny?”

Laura sounded lost, though it fell on deaf ears. Danny would find out in the morning if her orders were followed.

The dull roar in the back of her mind demanded action, revenge.

Danny acquiesced.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The Applied Chemistry building was a monument to pseudosciences and the occult worship of whomever was in charge of the Alchemy Club at the time.

It was the only dictatorship the Dean allowed to happen underneath her own power. The head of the Alchemy Club was the closest thing to a religious leader Silas had, though it was always more a cult than a congregation.

Kirkland wasn’t the worst leader they’d ever had. No massive accomplishments, no new territory, no conquered people to call his own. Danny and the other organisational heads generally ignored him. Dismissed him as a middling threat that was constantly on the back-burner when it came to the constant warfare of Silas University.

He and Danny had clashed in the past, over where and when it was appropriate to sacrifice moderately sized rodents. Kirkland said in the Applied Chemistry building, Danny said in the woodlands, obviously.

Laura and Carmilla did not need to know about what the Summer Society got up to in the woods. Danny would never live some of it down and Carmilla wouldn’t stop comparing them to Xena’s Amazons, ever.

A tiny freshman who drew the short straw met her inside the thin marble doors, his hands thrown up and the colour draining from his face.

“You can’t be in here,” he said, voice cracking. Danny smiled brightly. “Orders from Mister Kirkland.”

As if his supposed authority could ever hold weight with her.

Something inside her told her lips to keep smiling, Danny let the influence flow over her, consume her.

“Either you move,” she began, slow and excited, “or we fight. Short version? I win and you become a decorative rug that’s far too lumpy.”

The sword demanded to be drawn, Danny held it to the freshman’s throat. He kept his nerve for five seconds longer than Danny thought he would, breaking and running away with tears rolling down his cheeks.

“There’s a good kid.”

The entrance hall was tall and open, a monument to obsidian and what had to be ivory. Danny wondered why it was glowing faintly, most things that glowed at Silas were to be feared.

Going to school here was like deep sea diving, stay away from the light.

Older students, with matching Alchemy Club jackets and glowing sticks that might have been a failed attempt at lightsabers, showed up next. The tumbled out of the older styled elevator at the other end of the hall, the metal gate screeching horribly as it was forced open by their bulk.

Danny twirled her sword around her body with an unnecessary flourish. Yesterday, by either definition of yesterday, she wouldn’t have gone at them so aggressively, so violently. The Alchemy Club was actively trying to kill her Carmilla. Their leader totally willing to kill her Laura. This was not the time for restraint.

The first guard she didn’t recognise came at her with a wild swing with all of his considerable weight behind it. Danny slipped around the glowing stick, noticing that his hands were exposed on the grip of the makeshift sword. Danny’s sword had a guard.

“First time fighting?” Danny taunted, ducking away from the backswing that inevitably came at her face. She laughed. “Tell me where he is and you might live.”

The second guard surged forward in a lunge as the first tripped over his own feet. Danny stepped to one side and slashed cleanly through the back of his left hand, the glowing stick going flying across the room. It sparked as it connected with the impossibly white flooring. The guard collapsed on top of his partner, screaming.

Murder wasn’t the answer.

Danny left them, remembering their burn-scarred faces and jackets identifying them as the incoming seniors to replace the upper echelons of the Alchemy Club. Tomorrow they would not receive such mercy.

The elevator was a tempting offer. It could also be overridden by Kirkland. Danny took the stairs after a quick coin toss to decide between up and down.

Descending into the lower levels of the building was asking for trouble.

Another guard dropped his not-lightsaber when he noticed her. Danny smashed her guard into his face to ensure he didn’t go crying to anyone else.

Phone vibrating, Danny went through the guard’s pockets while checking her own messages.

‘LaFontaine diverted Miss Hollis to Miss Perry for comforting after your little visit.’

Danny rolled her eyes and knew she could act on her baser violent desires regarding LaFontaine in the morning. She presumed another short day was ahead of her, anything else would have to wait until the morning. ‘I’ll deal with them tomorrow.’

The guard had a small notebook, covered in dates and times with carefully entered notes on orders given and initiatives planned. Danny would have kicked him out were it the Summer Society for such carelessness.

Kirkland was hiding in his personal chambers directly underneath Danny’s feet, three floors down into the basements. Whatever Kirkland was working on at the moment was in the exact centre of the Applied Chemistry building.

Decisions, decisions.

Revenge or finding out what was going on and potentially how to stop it.

Danny went down another two sets of stairs and came upon the entire graduating class of the Alchemy Club. The head’s bedroom lay at the end of an old, moss-covered stone hallway. The door surrounded by carved runes filled in half with lead and half with golf. Symbolism had real worth and meaning at Silas.

“Gentlemen,” she greeted. “We can either do this the we all live way, or we do it the I kill as many of you as possible and then die way. The second option does involve me coming for you tomorrow.”

The crowd faltered for just a moment, enough time for Danny to strike. The first one went down hard, a slash along his throat. Danny swung with all her might, severing the arm of the next member of the Alchemy Club. The rest backed off slowly, parting to allow her access to their leader.

“He’s not even in there,” one of the cowering masses whimpered. “What did Jeff do to you?”

“Jeff made some poor life choices,” said Danny.

The Alchemy Club lost all its fight.

The doors to Kirkland’s quarters swung open of their own accord. The runes around the doorway glowed a deep red. Danny didn’t want to go inside, her blood-lust sated and the voice in her head satisfied with the lives it had taken so far.

“What’s your boss’ pet project?”

They didn’t answer.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Three hours later, a message sat on her phone from J.P. telling her that Carmilla inevitably got worse.

Tomorrow, she thought while washing her hands and sword of the blood, will be another day. Another chance to force LaFontaine’s hand.

To find Kirkland and rake him over hot coals until he told her what was causing the time loop and what he’d done to Carmilla.

She couldn’t handle seeing Carmilla poisoned to death. Couldn’t cope with Laura’s tears. Maybe someday, but today was not that day. Danny Lawrence wasn’t prepared to lose someone like that, so soon into their inherently limited time together.

Walking to the Summer Society took an age. Like the day refused to be over, even as the abnormally early sunset began. Danny hadn’t noticed that thus far in the loop. Her day was short due to how long she slept, the sun setting early seemed perfectly normal.

“Boss?” Scarlett called from deeper inside the house. Danny stopped moving, aware of how much blood was dripping from her body and her clothes. If her hair wasn’t red before, it certainly was now.

Signs of life were rare on the night after graduation. Taking it easy was practically a requirement after the wild night graduation from Silas always promised. No one came here lightly, no one left quietly. Or sober.

“Not now, Scarlett,” Danny called back. The American generally did as she was told, except for when smoking was involved. Most sophomores were military-like in their adherence to the hierarchy of power at Silas. Laura was the statistical outlier.

“But there’s mail for you,” Scarlett argued.

“Tell me about it in the morning,” Danny snapped and rushed up the stairs so Scarlett would lose her nerve. “If tomorrow ever comes.”

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

The blood took the rest of the day to wash off.

J.P. spent an entire hour giving her a running commentary on Carmilla’s health declining suddenly again. Danny largely ignored it.

“Just you and me, Adele,” Danny said to herself in the mid afternoon rush of people waking up. “Tomorrow will be a brand new day.”

Silas lost three students and a quasi-student vampire that day. Danny Lawrence went to sleep thinking she was okay with how the day turned out. Her sword, rescued from the Library while no one was looking, hummed with energy it hadn’t felt since duels to the death over a lady’s honour were all the rage in France. The bloodshed was back. A way to escape the cruel metal prison formed. The linchpin the sword spent months upon months searching for in this foolish girl’s employ was finally apparent. The sword would take the blood it could without consequence, then it would bring the fog back over this silly girl’s sense of morality just in time to save the day.

For now, it would let her rest. Tomorrow, the helpful and excusing voice in her ear would disappear. The elastic snap of her mind would be delightful. The sword made bets with itself on how long it would take for its wielder to recover.

If she recovered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aiming to be 100% done with this universe by the end of the year. Fatigue is a pain and I don't want to leave this incomplete because that annoys me.


End file.
